Where were you when you made the biggest mistake of your life? Maybe at the altar, marrying somebody you hated? Or running away from somebody you loved? Maybe you bombed an interview for your dream job because of some horrible diarrhea.

But me? I was laying in bed at three in the morning, browsing reddit on my phone when I should have been sleeping. Oh my fucking god should I have been sleeping.

I saw a post on the old school subreddit, somebody asked which item people would bring to the real world. Plenty of people were commenting gold bars, gold necklaces, gilded platebodies. The obvious stuff.

For me though, the explorer's ring screamed to me. Who knew what things would high alch for in the real world? Who knew what run energy restoration would do for me? I left a comment and then went to sleep.

When I woke up, I felt something cold wrapped around my finger. I looked at my hand and saw it right there. An explorer's ring 4. On my finger. The magic pulsed through my fist, begging me to use it.

So I did, of course. I called on the powers to high alch the underwear I was wearing, and dozens of gold coins appeared on top of my groin. It was incredible, intoxicating. And dangerous, but I didn't understand that yet.

I quit my job that day. I had a pile of gold coins worth far more than the underwear I lost, if I sold the gold and bought more underwear I'd have unlimited money. Or, well, limited by the thirty uses every day that the ring gave me. More than enough for a comfortable life.

The next toy to play with was the run energy restoration. I found I didn't even need to sleep anymore, every time I would get tired I could just draw on its magical energies and fill my body with them. The exhaustion would wash away as though it were never there.

The ring was more than I ever hoped it would be. But there was one more feature on the ring. Another source of that powerful energy pulling me towards it. The cabbage port.

I had no idea where it would take me. To a field of cabbages in California? Hell, even to south of Falador in the game? I couldn’t think of a single good option, a single place that I would want to be teleported to. So I skipped it.

The weeks flew by, and then the months. I eventually bought a large warehouse in the city just to store all of the gold coins that I was getting. There was no way for me to ever sell all of the gold I could create with the ring, and giving it away to people just seemed like a disaster waiting to happen.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

I could have buried it all I guess, bought a nice van and dug some holes out in the forest. But something about seeing the pile of gold grow with each day just felt so right to me. I’d sell a bit of gold off to pawn stores whenever I ran out of money, and spent all of my time buying new things and alching them.

I had infinite money, and it was amazing. I was going to buy a yacht, a mansion. I was going to buy everything I could ever want.

One day, I bought a sword, forged by one of the greatest European smiths of our time apparently. Cost me a little over ten thousand dollars. I was a little scared of the tax man coming and getting me over my sudden surge of wealth, but the power called me time and time again.

I drew on the ring, transforming the sword into an uncountable number of coins. It filled the warehouse I had bought just to store everything, with even more flooding out of the walls, breaking through the windows. The sound of what seemed like millions of gold coins smashing into each other deafened me.

Panic flooded me. Cars stopped on the street, staring at the massive mound of gold that poured from my warehouse. The walls flexed, trying to contain the immense wealth and then snapped, gold flying out in every direction. Windows were smashed, electrical poles toppled over as the wave of gold continued its furious expansion.

I did the only thing I could think of at the time. There was no getting out of this situation if I stayed here. People would ask questions, they’d want to know where the gold came from, they’d want to know what happened.

So the ring finally won, and I pulled on the last magical thread it had. A massive cabbage grew from the ground and surrounded me. Moments later I was somewhere else.

Somewhere familiar. Somewhere I had always dreamt of being as a kid but never wanted to see as an adult.

The cabbage patch south of Falador.

Y’know, I think that at one point we’ve all imagined it. Whisked away into our favourite game, filled with all the knowledge we needed to succeed. But in that moment, I knew that it wasn’t just a dream. This wasn’t some fantasy of mine. This was reality, and I wanted to go home.

I tried to draw on the power of the ring again, desperately wishing the cabbage port would send me back. I knew it wouldn't, this wasn't a crystal of memories. But I tried anyway in desperation.

And not only did it not send me back, it wouldn’t even send me to the cabbage patch again. Instead, I realized a problem. A big problem. You see, I had a high level runescape account. Filled with gold and gear, and more importantly, membership.

But that’s not the account I showed up here on. No, that would have been far too nice. Instead, I showed up as regular old Quintin Parker. And this fancy ring of mine? Even if the cabbage port could take me back, the ring only seemed to want to tell me one thing.

“Login to a members’ server to use this object.”